THIS WAS POSTED IN ANOTHER FORUM BUT IS PROBABLY MORE TOPICAL IN THIS THREAD
Dear B scaler, I cannot agree with your thoughts on the fallback and I further believe that a significant (but not majority) number of the HKAOA membership has not fully understood the ramifications of the rejection of RP07 and the poor rosters which will most likely result if the fallback position is implemented. The rosters will be far more biased to what the company wants rather than what the pilot wants because simply put, we will have agreed to forfeit all of the lifestyle provisions in RP07 in exchange for one re-inclusion namely the 543 rule, which only benefits those undertaking exclusive ULR flights. The old reserve system to be implemented with the fallback is unlimited in the number of days that will be rostered and for example a 6 hour reserve period you will get only 1.25 hours credit if not called out.
Whilst RP 04/07 is far from perfect it does have the basis of a system that delivers considerable lifestyle and roster choices that a minority of the membership may have thoughtlessly jettisoned forever if the AOA leadership did not take the recent sensible approach it has . The situation is…. The President has delivered the letter terminating RP07/07 however he has asked, and the company has agreed to extend RP04 for a few months with a view to reviewing the contentious issues with the company.
There are certainly areas RP07 can be improved upon and leave credits is one of them. The company were just plain greedy by not agreeing to a credit value for leave which prevented work stacking. The correct value is in the order of 2.7 – 2.8 hours per day a figure that would give 42 hours work and 42 hours leave credits for a month in which half the month was leave, totalling 84 for the month.
My own experience with the new reserve system was that it was much better than previous year’s system and I only did 18 days each year of the trial. I was nearly 100% called out well in advance and never sat 12 hours of reserve with ULR callouts late in the duty. I know this was not universal and did not apply to 744 Captains who are well under the required manning levels and they do have a genuine reason to complain about the amount of reserve, regrettably the re introduction of the old system will not reduce the amount of reserve it will increase the number of days on reserve significantly due to the 4 hour FDP clock limiting the use of the pilot. The company are also greedy when cancelling a split duty and replacing it with 2 days of 12 hours reserve and I do not know of anyone who had a cancelled duty replaced with O days. They (CX) need to take some responsibility for the motion failing.
I fail to grasp the view of some…. that by rejecting RP 04/07 and enforcing the fallback with the 543 rule is going to hurt the company to such an extent and force them to negotiate a better deal because it will leave aeroplanes on the ground in the interim. RP01 is their imposed system and they lived with it for several years. Without all of the lifestyle requests, Jokers, W patterns, unlimited reserve and O days they will be easily able to schedule the task and our rosters will be poor to say the least. In fact the company may argue that it may be better placed to expand without the restrictions of lifestyle components of the rostering request system. There could however be mass discontentment throughout the pilot body for whatever impact that may have.
I am content that logical heads prevailed with both our AOA leadership and the company in extending RP04 for a short while.
This is my understanding of the process of the fallback following the failure of the RP04 vote or any renegotiated proposal.
From May 07 we will go back to an interim fallback position which is basically RP01 with a version (there were several) of 543 for pax fleet, the old “unlimited reserve” system with 3 man ULR with a reduction of 7% credit. The lifestyle inclusions of RP 04/07 may or may not be included as policy as the company sees fit, there is no agreement to do so.
Should the AOA decide to activate a court case and we had a total victory we could expect to return to RP94 a system which was unilaterally imposed by the company and a system the AOA has been attempting to dismantle for well over a decade. The fallback of RP01 will run for a maximum of 4 years with the only protection the AFTL’s thereafter, failing an agreement or win for the AOA in court.
RP01 was also imposed by the company and it lacks all of the lifestyle features incorporated into RP 04/07. None of the credit factors will be included in our COS. At the end of 4 years the credit values could be unilaterally changed adversely. RP07 was going to have all the credit values in the COS.
The 3 man ULR factor will reduce from 1.14 to 1.07 adding a 7% workload increase to those on an AKL base and those undertaking those duties.
There will be no credit if you change your positioning duty.
There is no agreement/requirement to roster A days a feature that many crew on a base voluntarily choose to do.
There is no agreement to have JRC involvement in rostering issues. In fact there will be no need to monitor anything because there is nothing to monitor, only a set of previously imposed credit values and 543 for those on ULR pax fleets.
There is no requirement to give 6 jokers per year. At best it would be “Policy” a very distant second fiddle to manning the task.
There is no provision for lifestyle rostering i.e. W patterns for those who choose them and if the company did elect to allow them there is no agreement to limit them if they are adversely affecting other rosters by taking all of the ULR flights for those on W patterns.
There are no protections (even the wishy washy ones in RP04) to prevent work stacking under the fallback agreement.
There is no requirement to give any seniority or any other consideration to flight/days off requests; it will be at total company convenience, if at all.
There are no limits on the number or placement of O days in the roster; likewise there are no limits on the placement or amount of reserve days in a roster. Expect more of both due to the reintroduction of 543 and just because “they can do it”.
The minimum G day count will reduce by 10, and this is probably what you would get after the roster is filled with reserve and O days. Most of us will have 92 G days and 42 leave days and that will be it.
Regards
Cyril